Pride not Violence

I came back from San Francisco Gay Pride with a nice shiner- yup a black eye. From my twitter comments many of you were wondering what the hell happened.  Well, lemme tell ya how it all went down….

Before we knew it, another car pulled up and out jumped what seemed to be 6 angry thug lesbians and 3 thug dudes.  They were apparently drunk and in the mood to fight.  Upon seeing the angry mob, I apologized and tried to move.  It was pride and I didn’t want any trouble. Unfortunately, they had blocked us into the parking lot and were not even thinking of backing off.  All that went through my mind was getting me and my friends out of there.  Before I knew it, they had forced the car door open and one of them clocked me in the face.  At this point it had gotten way out of control.  We managed to maneuver around the mob and exited the parking lot.  As we drove away they beat and kicked the car angrily.

"..one of them clocked me in the face.  At this point it had gotten way
out of control"

At that point, I could have called the police but didn’t feel like waiting and filling out a police report.  We could have gotten out and fought but I didn’t want to lose a tooth or even worse, a life.  I thought back to a former Club Papi assistant, Chad, who was murdered in the Castro a few years ago after getting into a fight after leaving a club.  He was beat to death and died of head injuries. That could have been us. We were greatly out numbered and it was obvious the kind of people they were- trash.

After the incident I was extremely upset and went back to the hotel to get ready for my 6 am flight back to Denver.  The more I thought about it the sadder I became.  Why, on pride, was I assaulted by not only other gay people but people of color? How can we expect straight people to respect us if we can’t respect ourselves, especially on Pride.  How can we expect the white gay community to respect us if we can’t even respect our fellow Black and Brown GLBT?  As the prides continue throughout the summer, I encourage everyone to have love for your fellow GLBT community.  Sure we are not always going to get along but never resort to violence.  Be safe and have a great pride season, control your alcohol, celebrate and be happy!